Digital donuts

Maybe I was craving donuts? Using the sketchbook app on my cell phone, I created some artistic renditions of everyone's favorite pastry. In this example, a "Homer Simpson" style donut with pink icing and colourful sprinkles was created with a variety of brushes, airbrushes, and texture stamps. The night's sky was created from spray paint and speckle textures, along with my knowledge of what colours compose a night sky. Its an impactful piece of art work, just one big hole in it. 

Celestial donut, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

Using neon brush tool I created a digital donut with illuminated sprinkles and a circuit-board like background. Even in the future we have donuts!

Digital donut, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

Going for a dark icing with art deco touches, this delectable donut jumps of the screen. Contrasting pastel tones with earthy donut texture and fluorescent highlights made for a striking image. 

Digital art deco donut, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

Taking a turn for abstract, here is a pop art, cubist approach to a donut, or maybe its a magnification of sprinkles? 

Pop art donut, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

Finally, a cherry cake with icing, sprinkles and frosting details. The cherries were made with several stamping layers, brush work, and a highlight effect. If you zoom in, there is lots of texture in this one. 
 

Cherry icing sprinkles, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000 

And not so exotic paintings

To me anyways, London Ontario was not considered to be exotic. But I suppose if someone were visiting from far-off Reunion Island it would seem exotic. In this scene, I set up in a parking lot at the famous City View breakfast diner, with a view of the city in the background. It was an ambitious painting, probably done in 1998, complete with poles, wires, paint on parking lot, a car, and plenty of other details. I used cerulean blue back then, but since stopped due to its poor mixing qualities and slight toxicity. 

City View London Ontario, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1998

This is among the first location paintings I ever did, during winter of 1995/1996. To think, the internet was not even a big thing at the time, although I was playing around with the Gopher server, a list-based early version of the internet. It was overcast on this day, and I captured a soft range of pastels using a limited palette. 

Park structure winter overcast,  watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1996

By 1997 or so I had incorporated cerulean blue in my palette which you see in the sky. It was my go-to blue sky colour until I switched to phthalo blue sapphire (PB15 red shade) and viridian hue (PG7) in the year 2020. I was adding cerulean to shadows at the time, you can see the violet appearance on the structure's shadows. 

Park structure winter sunny, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1997

I assume this was done afterwards in the summer of 1998 perhaps, I wasn't into record-keeping back then although I tired. There was an old University calendar where I documented which paintings I did on which day, but never kept it up. I started blogging around 2006, then moved to Blogger in 2008. 

Park structure summer, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 1998

Exotic paintings from archive

About 15 years ago I visited Reunion Island, a French territory in the Indian Ocean. It is south of Seychelles, and east of Madagascar, at the end of the world! Honestly I felt crummy the whole trip due to the lengthy transit time, about 40 hours door to door via two planes and a long transfer in Paris, and then the altitude of staying on the heights of an old Volcano mountain in the main city st Denis. The whole place seemed a little unsafe with falling rocks and intense storms from the surrounding sea. This painting was done on location in the center of the island where there is a hidden valley and village famous for its flavoured rum and potent pot. 

Cloudy blue mountains, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 2011

This painting captures the general atmosphere of the island... a misty haze with intense colours. Looking more closely I see what appears to be aureolin yellow, I must have been still using it back then. I would have used bismuth vanadate if I was there now, although I have no desire to return. I am warming up to the idea of going to India though. 

Palm tree haze, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 2011

 

Down in the town, a Chinese food restaurant had this sign, I tried to copy the symbols accurately but who knows what it said. You can see in the background how intense the light was, and how most buildings had white and cream coloured plaster facades. 

Chinese food sign, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

Jardin du Luxembourg

Here is an old painting I did in Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris France, 15 years ago. At the time, I used burnt sienna (PR101) in mixes, which gave a warm glow to the overcast sky and autumn trees in the mid ground. It would be nice to go back if I get the chance.  

Jardin du Luxembourg. watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 2011

Dorchester square scenes late Spring

Down in Dorchester square park the other day and I made a few paintings as the sun was still up. Here are benches arranged in a semi circle around a berm of grass and trees. An acre of interlocking brick adorns this park, along with a steady aroma of weed.

Arched benches, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

 

I found this solid looking canon to be in great contrast with delicate parasol-style umbrellas the city installed to make it feel more like Paris in the summer. Painting reflective iron required multiple layers and texturing to create the illusion of volume. Many people were enjoying the seating, the furniture is done in 'ice cream chair' style painted pale whitish green. According to google maps, these are Canons de Sébastopol.

Canons and parsols, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

 

Pink ground cover and yellow flowers provided a pop of colour against an otherwise green and brown background. My yellow paint got goopy on location and I actually ran out, had to find scenes with less yellow after this one! I just rinsed and reloaded my palettes at home, so I am ready to go for more when the opportunity arises. 

Pink and yellow flower garden, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

 

Yet more digital art !

If I keep this up I will have to rename my blog to Darlington Digital! I can whip off a bunch of these in short order, sitting on the couch or waiting for the dentist etc. This one started with a near-black background and used a variety of neon stamps and brushes to create a whirling electrical affect. There is a symmetry tool that replicated the brush stroke which allowed for some neat patterns. 

Sky eye twister, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

This one used mostly stamp tools with some some eraser applied over top. Colour schemes can be controlled by avoiding one colour in particular and using all the others. In the example, there is no green anywhere. 

X marks, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

Same idea with the colour scheme, no green, or blue for that matter. I drew hands reaching up with soft pastel brush, just varying the width of the brush to create fingers. Then circle stamps were applied in successive layers along with a few starburst stamps in white to create glow. 

Bubble trouble, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

An earthy approach, I also used lots of stamps along with various types of brushes and pens to create the foliage. Orange, yellow and green can go well with brown. The nice thing about digital art is you can overlap things and it works perfectly. Hard to do with paint, especially watercolour. 

Forest growths, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

And my signature piece, PJD, in neon turquoise over a textured brown surface. Sparkles were created with a variety of textured brush strokes, spatter, and dotting tools. Its like a piece of artwork you can eat, chocolate mocha icing with sprinkles on top! 

My name is, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000 

Digital Tuesday, neon, pastel, splatters

Here are a few more digital sketches made using Sketchbook App on my smart phone. For this one, I set the background to dark maroon, then drew random shapes using the neon paintbrush tool. Varying the colours between yellow, white, red and cyan gave a neon look. The tool makes the glow effect automatically. 

Neon doodle, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

Going with another dark background, this time on the blue side, I stamped over a variety of colourful patterns. To change the stamp, one has to delve into the advanced feature, nib, then find the little pictures and there are about three dozen stamp varieties which can be further altered for shape, size and randomness. 

Tangle splatters, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

Starting with the default white background and some pastel lines, I over-stamped green splatters which caused negative effects. The initial lines look white where the splatters are green, I am not sure why that happened but it looks pretty darn cool. 

Pastel foliage swirls, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

Using soft pastel brush gives a chalk-on-the-sidewalk effect. Varying colours and aligning the brush-strokes gave a breezy appearance. Just the background seemed bland, so I overlaid a few smudge brush strokes on different angles to complete a windy feeling. I accidentally reversed the image, you see my initials mirror-image, just noticed now.... I guess the painting blew over!

Chalk line smudges, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

I forgot which brush this was in the background, it was from the texture essential menu. Concentric rectangles followed a roughly rainbow progression of colours. Smudge-brush over top was used to write my initials and a few random shapes. This one really felt like I was finger painting!

Smudge over texture, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000